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Trigger Manis a superb collection of stories capturing the gritty spirit of Detroit and the sometimes grim circumstances of the characters shaped by its industry and economics. Grounded on the bleak streets of the Motor City, these stories also explore the mythical “Up North,” the idealized country of many Detroit workers’ fantasy - an escape from the concrete and metal reality of their daily lives. Daniels’ characters are resilient and defiant, inhabiting a world that has often placed them on the margins of society, scouring a declining region for spiritual providence. Building on Daniels’ earlier collections of stories, Trigger Manbrings vivid life to individuals struggling both to remain in and to flee the city that once sustained them.

Detroit Tales: Daniels is a gifted writer, whose sense of narrative structure is assured and whose vernacular style is felicitous. He knows the territory, street by street.... More than Elmore Leonard. Daniels is now its [Detroit's] prose laureate, the spokesman for its desperate citizens. Mr.Pleasant: The stories in Mr. Pleasant chronicle the unavoidable losses of youth and second chances of middle age with warmth and humor. Jim Daniels knows the price of our mistakes, and our defeats and victories, and how much hope we spend trying to redeem our failures. Jim Ray Daniels is the Thomas Stockman Baker Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University. He has published three previous collections of short stories and received the Best Regional Fiction Gold Medal in the 2008 Independent Publisher Book Awards.